Notes on the changing media landscape

March 24, 2013

"You can’t
bring about innovation with disruption," a friend of mine likes to say.
Luckily, I’ve also gleamed some valuable insights on exactly how to go about
changing what I myself like to call dysfunctional organisations from her, or
how to disrupt them enough to bring about real innovation.

Now it must
be said I had no idea how insanely short on time and focus outside of work I’d
be this week (and how much in need of the vacation I started yesterday) when I
accepted the challenge to manage @CorporateRebels in week 12. But, now that my much needed vacation has finally
arrived, it offers me the opportunity (and much needed impetus) to sit down and
write that post I’ve long been contemplating on disruption management.

As so many
good things in life, it started with a great conversation: This particular
conversation took place in London in 2010, while visiting my friend Adriana
Lukas (who, as it happens, was the woman who set up this very blog for me and
told me to get blogging back in 2005). Adriana is, in Jackie Danicki’s words, "a professional disruptor" and the topic for our conversation that evening, was
Adriana’s recent thoughts on what she coined ”disruption management”.

In
Adriana’s words (via this blog post by Jackie): "Disruption is not about
destruction. It’s about putting things off-balance in order to change them, so
you can sneak something new and better in between the cracks."

find people to set up a loose and
cross-functional network of allies who end up building alternative ways

The first three apply to those who have had their OFM. The forth is the hardest and involves co-operation, conversations,
reaching out and most of all willingness to face the stigma of a disruptor.
There rarely is innovation without disruption…

After
having that late night conversation with Adriana about disruption management
back in January 2010, it felt like I had found an important, missing link that
tied so much of what I had been thinking about the previous few years together.

See, I’ve
always felt that companies, and especially media companies, are very much like
more or less dysfunctional families (please note, I say this with almost as
much love as I have for my own weird and wonderful family), and I’ve sometimes
observed how dysfunctional managers create co-dependent employees. In general, I’d long been contemplating how there's so
much that is true about individual psychology that's also true about companies:
"As above, so below" - macro
cosmos mirrors micro cosmos.

And
journalism has at times felt like one of the most dysfunctional industries
ever, dysfunction being the norm and not the exception - something that's even
eulogised at times. As a journalist, hearing eulogies like this about other
media folks is not uncommon: "He
was a right old crook and bastard, mercurial and just plain impossible at times,
a heavy drinker whose wife long since left him: But he was a hell of a journalist
to the end of his times". Crook, bastard and heavy drinker often being
honorary words when used by journalists and editors about journalists and
editors.

This is a
type of mythology I’ve always detested, and why I’ve repeatedly talked about how
journalism needs new heroes, new myths: And as I’m passionate about the
opportunities online media holds for transforming and expanding journalism, I’ve
often talked about the way new online tools and services can help bring about
more open, more transparent, more social, more informed, more service-oriented
journalism - and sought to point to "heroes" and positive "myths" from that
field.

It’s easy
to point out how tools such as Twitter of Google Maps have created new
opportunities for lazy journalism and celebrity stalking, but there’s also tons
of examples on how such tools have created a more transparent, more informed
journalism that wasn’t quite possible in the same way before.

So when you
bring the change new tools represents into media organisations, it changes
journalism as well. Also, if you can identify, educated and network the people
who have the passion, and the skills or willingness to learn them, for bringing about change, that can also help
bring about new solutions, new alliances – and affect change. Which all, might
help bring about small, loosely organised, doses of disruption management,
though perhaps not enough? Perhaps, the change is only incremental as the old
school still is in charge? (Kevin has
posted
some reflections related to this here)

Again, I do
know how hard it can be, or seem, to bring about substantial change in the
industry I’m most familiar with as we’re always chasing deadlines, always fighting
the daily chaos (which I written about here, here, here and here – to mention a few
posts). So these
tips come in handy:

A few tips for those who find themselves in a situation where the
organisation is their worst enemy:

Don’t try to change the system from within –
i.e. trying to bring a change by going through established and outdated
processes.

Find people inside the organisation who
understand both how important and good such change is and the original
reason behind processes that are stopping it.

Increase their knowledge and understanding of
what you are trying to bring about, share tools, passion, ideas,
frustrations.

Gradually connect these people in a network
that will amplify their ability to make things happen ‘under the radar’,
i.e. bypassing the dysfunctional processes and in effect creating
alternative ways of doing things.

Make sure the ‘alternative ways’ are not
grabbed by the system’s people and turned into their version of inflexible
and ossified processes.

Rinse, lather and repeat – 2 or 3 times helps
but once already feels good.

Wave good bye to ‘business cases’ and say
hello to ‘case studies’ i.e. ‘this is how we have done it and all we want
is to enable everyone else to do something similar if they wish’.

This, to my
mind, is brilliant advice, and applies not only to companies but to all kinds
of organisations. This, I think, is also why all kinds of networks of change
makers, change hungry or change curious people, such as Norwegian Online News
Association and Girl Geek Dinners, can be so powerful when it comes to connecting
the right people with each other and with powerful ideas…

March 17, 2013

Add meetings, presentations and report-writing that title pretty much sums up my week.It's been a week with a slightly dizzying pace, very intense, but, although I started it in the doctor's office, I got a lot of important things done, learnt some valuable new things and received some good news.

At work, I was very pleased to attend the first of three full-day workshops I've organised on web content analysis, expertly held by Netlife Research - which turned out to be extremly useful, and taught me many valuable things about our content and how various parts of the organisation approach it.

At this stage I should perhaps explain that I'm writing this post as much for myself as anybody else, because I was so nackered at the end of this week I really have to remind myself about all the good things it contained.

In addition to learning the secrets of web content analysis, I was delighted to learn that an author-to-be I've been working with for close to two years now, finally has signed a book contract with a publishing house I work for. To say "worked with" is perhaps a bit of an overstatement, but this project all started with a features idea I had back in August 2011 or so, and we've talked about the project and project brief, which quickly evolved into a book idea, for about a year now. Perhaps needless to say, I think it may turn into a great book - and a very important one.

I should be over the moon about all this, as those two book-related bits of "completed" are kind of milestones, but right now I'm just looking forward to a long Easter holiday - when I might even find some time to blog some reflections from that before-mentioned debate - and more web content analysis' workshops coming up this week.

Oh, and I'm looking forward to all the good books I plan to read this Easter (this weekend saw me mid-way through "The Secrets of the Lazarus Club", an uncomplicated, riveting crime novel set in London in the 1850s, exactly what I needed after a week like this).

March 10, 2013

After introducing a "hard" paywall in November 2011, tiny local newspaperHallingdölen in Ål, Norway, boasts of its best financial year ever in 2012.

The name of its businessmodel? "Ål inclusive" (the term refers to how only paying subscribers can access the paper on all platforms).

Fascinating. And if you know that "betalingsmur" is Norwegian for paywall, Google does a half-decent job if you try running this Kampanje-piece on the story through Google translate.

As I wrote about for Journalism.co.uk, Scandinavian media was hit by a bit of a paywall craze last year, so a lot of people will be watching this and the early results from other recent paywall-projects very closely. Hallingdölen also claims, in the before-mentioned article, to have been the inspiration for another recent and much talked about paywall-project, that of Norwegian regional Faedrelandsvennen (which I blogged about here).

What makes this extra interesting, is that this story comes in the same week as Facebook introduced it latest revamp and with re-newed vigour made clear its ambitions to become "the world's best personal" newspaper - or position itself as your (hyper)local newspaper if you like.

So where does this leave local newspapers long-term? How long before Facebook will conquer the (hyper)local ad market? Or will Facebook's hübris and blantant disregard for its users privacy have killed it off before it ever can conquer such a positon in a rural part of a country on the outskirts of the world such as Norway (albeit a country with a very impressive broadband penetration)?

March 06, 2013

Here's a book I just discovered is hot off the press today, a book I've been working as a bit of a backstage assistant for, and am delighted to finally see published.

It's a history of Norwegian blogging, and the book's title roughly translates to something like "Give me a stage! Norwegian blog history - ten years of terror, trauma and today's outfit".

The book is an anthology where prominent Norwegian bloggers charts this history in personal essays, focusing on how blogging changed their own lives and what wider impact it has had. More about the book here, in Norwegian. And the launch is set for next Tuesday, more about that event here (also in Norwegian):

March 03, 2013

This might be old news if you follow me on any of my Norwegian social media profiles, but I thought I'd take a few minutes to explain the radio silence on this blog last month:

I was tired of my search for a nice place to rent dragging on and on, wrote a blog post about the flat search, the post got reweeted by lots of helpful souls - and the process landed me the place where I now live.

Except moving is a true nightmare. I worry way too much about everything that may go wrong along the way, and find it hard to stop worrying until everyting is done and dusted.

I saw this place for the first time end of January, signed the contract mid-Feburary, and has been moving ever since next to a full-time job and other work committments. I'm delighted with my new home and how I came to live here, but I've only just managed to unpack all my books (well, save one box) this weekend.

I'll admit I've had a strong inkling to only share lots of house- and moving related stuff online the last few weeks, but thought I'd better abstain for the most part (instead I'm afraid my colleagues have borne the brunt of this temporary obsession).

I hope to get back to blogging about media related stuff, and an exciting book launch coming up, next week.

In the meantime I'm very proud of this mess as these boxes are all empty (finally) and ready to be put away in storage:

The news
reached me when I was at the mercy of a very angry sinus infection, after
having covered a ministerial visit to a building site on a freezing Monday
afternoon, and I wasn’t even aware of the list being put together – so it was
an extra pleasant surprise.

It must be
said though, that this blog never did have journalists as its specific target
group.

It just
sort of ended up rather quickly as blog on information, social media,
traditional media, media acquisitions, journalism and all those sort of things.

Over the
years it has very much shaped my career and work, it was almost like this blog
took on a life on its own – by the way
it revealed me to be a media nerd, shaped my public persona and created all
sorts of wonderful job offers and career avenues for me.

That is a
major reason why these days I constantly regret not finding time to blog more here – I write
for three different blogs, for a quite a while I was even paid to write a forth
one for Norway’s most read news site, and at the moment I’m involved with quite
a few book projects next to a very rewarding, full-time job.

Incidentally, one such project is a history of Norwegian blogging, an anthology, which is due to be published in March - so I've found myself reflecting a lot on my personal blogging history recently (I first got acquainted with blogs when I was doing work experience for a print newspaper close to Fleet Street in 2002, and it's so ironic to look back and realise that blogs ended up being much more helpful for my media career than that stint of work experience. I certainly had no idea it would turn out like this at the time).

These days though, I must admit I do more mental blogging than actual blogging. I have all these blog posts almost fully
written up in my mind – I just need to find the time to actually sit down and do the
writing. I keep promising myself I will
do. In the meantime, it seems I’ve at least seen the end of that sinus
infection. That’s a start, I guess.

January 19, 2013

A post about the recent bankruptcies of high street chains HMV, Blockbuster and Jessops - brands which holds a lot of memories with me - made me think back to a a favourite video which bears revisiting.

"Where-ever there is mediation there will be disruption.
This is not just the lesson of an economic downturn - it is the
structural reality of the networked world - of an Open Economy... The web disintermediates - and retail is mediation," wrote David Cushman following the recent collapse of these household names.

That post, or maybe it was HMV's collapse, I don't quite remember, reminded me of the excellent "Day of the Longtail", which I think I came across in 2006 or thereabouts via Adriana. Back then it was a feeling that this kind of disitermediation was imminent, but it has been a slow, drawn-out process which has far from come to it's end. In either case, the video is worth revisiting:

January 02, 2013

What if readers could just add a plugin to their browsers and instantly correct factual or grammatical errors on various news sites? Would they bother? Would news sites ever welcome such an innovation and use it to correct their content? Well, it does exist....

I know at least one former editor of mine whom I’d suspect would relish a tool like this, which would effectively enable him to put a grid over a news site and suggest corrections for any errors, grammatical or factual, in red print – almost like correcting paper pages with a red pen.

The first trend she singled out was #Verification, predicting the emergence on tools and systems bent on verifying content as a result of consumers are getting more sceptical. She even asked, rhetorically: ”What if there was a way to grade the trustworthiness of journalists?”

Well, this is not quite a tool to grade trustworthiness, but it is a tool its masterminds, Tobias Reitz and Kersten A. Riechers, dub a tool to facilitate crowdsourced media accountability.

They believe errors these days spread massively and quickly, like an electronic wildfire, in part due to social media such as Twitter & Facebook, and due to cost cutting in the newsrooms and the demand to do more with less, in addition to the emphasis on speed, they feel we have reason to believe errors happen more and more frequently.

Corrigo is browser plugin, and people do have to download it, but it helps you flag and correct factual errors, missing links and types in online news articles. With the plugin you can highlight sentences that contain errors. As a publisher you can click on the yellow line on the top of the site to see if there’s anything the Corrigo community wants to tell you.

Corrigo's vision is to fight haste and paste, and if you wonder if parts of an article is copied from a press release, you can check that straight away.

Now, I must admit I got acquainted with Corrigo while listening to Tobias and Kersten talk about it when attending a small media bloggers conference in Bristol as far back as August. So I don’t know if its inventors have forged any partnerships with media organisations since then.

Unfortunately, I picked up a bad strep infection on the way home form Bristol, which put me in bed for two weeks, and then work and life’s been moving at such a frantic pace since I got well that I’ve had no time to blog about it until now.

But it’s a fascinating concept and I’m curious to learn how it would work for a online media organisation and what kind of challenges they might face using it.

I do know, and did mention to Jude Townend, who was there blogging from the conference, that Schibsted-owned VG, a former client, has implemented its own kind of ”crowdsourced media accountability” measure - though very different from Corrigo.

What VG has done is to advertise for people who would serve voluntarily as proofreaders for its news site, which is Norway’s most read. From those who replied to that call they’ve chosen 100 proofreaders, many of them retired teachers, who voluntarily proofread VG.no’s articles.

The proofreading they do is not visible to the readers, but as a journalist you will get an email, or more, from the proofreaders if there are any grammatical errors in your articles. And the number of errors corrected in various journalists’ articles will show up in VG’s internal statistics – as a journalist those stats will enable you to see how many people read your article(s) that day (unique visitors), how many errors were corrected, how many likes it or they received on Facebook etc.

Which is a different way of doing things altogether than what Corrigo offers, but still an interesting and very efficient one.
In either case, it’s really interesting to see innovations like these come about and how they work.

Another verification tool for a very different purpose that Amy Webb mentioned in her before mentioned talk in San Francisco, was the Super PAC app – which works much like Shazam, just that it’s for political ads and not for music. The user holds the phone up to a political ad while it's playing to collect information about the ad's funding and other tidbits. That sounds useful, though I’m curious as to how well such an app can work.

In either case, limiting tech trends to such and such a year is rarely an accurate practice – one or more tends tend to be big one year, but more often than not these trends will tend to stretch over many years. And what many experts single out as a trend one year, very often turns into something more like a seed which rather gradually blossom into full bloom, often stretching over many years – sometimes even a decade or more.

So I for one am very much looking forward to see more of these innovations in verification- and crowdsourced verification, correction and accountability tools in 2013 and beyond as well...

January 01, 2013

It’s good
to see journalism school books and primers finally being updated to reflect the
new challenges and opportunities of our age.

A good example
of this is a book which arrived in my mail box just before Christmas:

Now, it must
be said that it arrived in my mail box because I provided some input on the
chapter on social media a few years back, and one of its editors is a former editor of
mine.

Still, the
book has gone through many revisions since I read that one chapter on social
media, and the result looks very promising. I’ve yet to find time to actually
read the book, but skimming through some of the content on social media and new
digital tools it looks like it offers a very comprehensive and up-to-date
guide.

I’m
especially looking forward to reading Rune Ytreberg’s chapter on the new
digital tools of the trade properly. Ytreberg is also due to give a talk on
this for The Norwegian Online News Association (NONA), the organisation I
co-founded, used to run and am a still a board member of, towards the end of this month.

From
skimming through it I see that one of the plethora of sources he credits is
Journalism.co.uk’s Colin Meek who NONA
brought over from Scotland to Oslo talk about advanced online research
techniques in April 2010.

Incidentally
that was the previously mentioned, and much covered, trip where Meek almost
got stranded in Oslo due to the ash cloud crisis. Only VG’s brilliant editorial
innovation, the Hitchhiker’s central, and me convincing a friend to drive
stranded travellers, including Meek, from Oslo to Dover (and then back again
with another load of stranded travellers) prevented that.

In either
case, it’s great to see some of NONA’s work bear fruit in this way as in the
book, and hopefully inspiring both better teaching and better practice when it
comes to utilising today’s digital tools as efficiently as possible to create
good, and perhaps even innovative, investigative journalism both in terms of
uncovering worthwhile stories and connections, and finding new ways to convey
these stories.

December 31, 2012

I think I made this card for new year 2009, as the world economy was in a complete mess after the 2008 bank crisis etc, then I didn't post it as I thought it would come across as a bit too pessimistic for a new year card. And yet I also think the photo rather beatiful, perhaps implying that even in the darkest of times there is always a lighter horizon and rescue ahead for those who choose it - or how every cloud has a sliver lining. Or perhaps that's reading way too much into a photo (which is one I snapped at Stavern harbour, Norway).

For my own part the future looks very far from bleak, I've just been too busy and preoccupied to blog much as of late.

2012 has in many ways been a turbulent and trying year for me, but it has also held wonderful professional opportunies - including joining the editorial board of a small publishing house, and learning so many invaluable things in the process, and starting a new job working with online development, social media and science communication at The Norwegian University of Life Sciences (more on that job here, in Norwegian) Oh, and working with some wonderful stories and book projects and moving out of a house I only realised after moving out made me ill to live in (due to major dampness issues I now suspect).

So everything is set for 2013 becoming a much better year for me than 2012.

Maybe, and I really hope it will be the case, I'll even find more time to blog in 2013. It's not that I've lost interest in blogging or the issues I blog about, it's just that life has been too demanding, I write for 3-4 different blogs and earned most of my living writing until September - and I've found myself becoming a much more passive consumer of social media this year than previously. I've still used social media a lot, but I've found myself listening more than sharing or participating actively in 2012.

In either case, I hope 2013 will be a stellar year for us all - and perhaps even for blogging:

He's writing about former Mecom-boss David Montgomery's newest media venture, regional newspaper group Local World, and it must be said it's far from the first time Montgomery has praised online developement in the Norwegian media market.

And rightly so, while Montgomery was in charge of Mecom, the company's Norwegian arm, Edda Media, was top of the class within the pan-European company both in terms of online product development and of earning money online.

My recent visit to the US for the Online News Association (ONA's) annual conference also brought home to me to how well Norwegian media (Schibsted, Edda, A-pressen etc) measure up, even compared to international media, when it comes to online journalism and innovation. But then it must also be said that as the founder and former president of the Norwegian Online News Association (NONA), where I'm still on the board, I may of course be somewhat biased.

A more interesting question is perhaps how well the ideas Montgomery bring with him from his time in Mecom, so controversial among Norwegian journalists, will go down with UK journalists.

Preston describes the gist of it as re-modelling local newspapers as "a one-stop shop for content and commerce".

That sounds very much like something along the line of what Montgomery described more in detail in this debate arranged by the Norwegian Union of Journalists (NJ) here (see the text below the subtitle "Newspapers to sell lingerie and wine). Or are we past that debate about knocking down the walls separating editorial and advertisement by now?

In either case, here's a few perspectives on Local World I found in my newsreader (amazingly my Icerocket search on Mecom still works, I'm so used to useful free online services being bought up or shut down by now):

September 30, 2012

Struggling to get your entire news organisation enthusiastic about the
possibilities inherent in big data sets? Texas Tribune has the answer.

I can’t recall just how many times the terms "data journalism" or "computer
assisted reporting (CAR)" have elicited big yawns from other journalists.

It is certainly nothing which will draw journalists to an event, unless you
focus on the most spectacular stories this kind of journalism has made
possible. So it’s perhaps no surprise
that Texas Tribune’s recipe for success is both simple and daunting:

Just do
it, and the enthusiasm will follow from the results.

"Data accounts for 66% of our traffic. I don’t think all the
journalists saw the light instantly, but as they saw really interesting stories
come out of the data and traffic started to pick up, everybody got interested,"
said Rodney Gibbs, Chief Innovation Officer for Texas Tribune at Online News Association's annual conference last weekend, ONA12.

He was on the panel together with Stephen Engelberg, Managing Editor of
ProPublica and Meghan Farnsworth, Senior Manager Distribution and Online
Engagement at the Centre for Investigative Reporting (CIR) for a session called "The Business of Collaboration".

Engelberg said they saw immense potential in sharing big data sets with
different news organisations who each focus on their own regional angle, and
that ProPublica’s collaborative data sets are now so distributed he discovers
partnerships via Google Alerts.

"It is really important to figure out if there are tools out there which
will help you distribute your content better," said Farnsworth, and spoke of
Publish2 as an incredible tool (which sort of reminded me I haven’t used
Publish2 for ages, better try to check in and have look around again soon).

"We certainly view everyone at ProPublica as journalists: it’s just
that some of them write words and others write code – that is the future of
journalism," said Engelberg.

Emily Bell interviewing Twitter CEO Dick Costolo was one of the
highlights of ONA12 – and the session also revealed some good news in store.

Twitter is working to create better event curation tools for journalists;
Costolo promised we will be able to download all our tweets within the end of
the year and a Twitter-version of Google Analytics is underway.

Those, to my mind, was some of the good news from this keynote session
at Online News Association’s annual conference, ONA12, which I attended in San
Fransisco last weekend.

But that is playing down the entertainment (or should that be
infotainment?) value of the interview.

Here are a few tidbits:

- I’d like to thank Costolo for ruining my attention span… In my
journalistic lifetime Twitter has probably been the tool that has had the
biggest impact on our professional lives in terms of how we do the job, said
Bell at the start of the session.

- You are dictating the biorhythm of free speech for an increasing number
of people all over the world.. How does it feel to be in charge of free press in
21st Century?

- It’s important for us to help our users protect their freedom of speech…
We were put between the rock and a hard place when we were told to hand over
information before the court of appeal was held, said Costolo, referring to the
Malcolm Harris-case. The Guardian’s Matt Wells has written more in detail on
that here.

Costolo agreed that this kind of judicial challenge is just going be a
more entrenched problem for Twitter in the times ahead.

As for the recent crackdown on third party apps, Costolo said, among
other things that this was "to make sure all our users got all our new features
and fixes immediately". Techcrunch has more on this story, but Costolo also
answered a question by Jeff Jarvis related to this by saying: - If you mean that
are there anything more we will restrict or restrain in the near future? Then
no.

- Is the area of openness over?, asked Bell. - No. We’ll continue to
spend a ridiculous amount of money to keep our API open, said Costolo

Bell: -When is instant translation coming? Costolo: - Not soon. Bell:
- When can we download all our tweets? Costolo: - Before the end of the year. But
you got to take into account it’s the CEO saying this, not the engineer building
it. It is a priority we actually want to have out by the end of the year.

Bell: - Twitter analytics like Google analytics, when can we have that?
Costolo: - We have the function, but have to improve it before rolling it out. Bell:
- Can we have it by the end of the year? Costolo: - No, I’m only going to over-commit
from stage once. Bell: - So end of next year (no protest from Costolo there).

Two other interesting points:

Costelo said Twitter would like to migrate
to a world where the 140 limit can serve as a caption for further content. In
general, he said Twitter is not about being a destination. - I’m a huge
believer in syndication and in that true platform companies always outflanks
products, he concluded.

(Oh, and I just realised I’ve used the standard Norwegian way to write
up quotes – and not " ...", but it goes better with my very quick write-up of
my notes)

Should such
a website just feature a collation of RSS-feeds from different European
journalist union sites and media bloggers, or should it do regular features to
highlight interesting cases? Or something else all together? And could there
possible be pan-European interest for media challenges that are unique to
England, Hungary or Norway? Can we share best practices, and how could we do
that in the most useful way?

Those were
some of the questions raised at the meeting.

For my own
part, I’m a big fan of sharing both challenges and best practices. Not at least
I think it’s very useful to share stories about how we handle various
challenges.

A case to the point is the twin terror attacks in Oslo and on Utöya 22/7
and the aftermath.

This was a very challenging and resource-intensive story to cover, 60
complaints have been lodged to the Press Complains Commission of which 49 were
unique (some complaints concerned the same issues), 40 have been evaluated and six
media organisations have been deemed in breach of the industry’s agreed code of
ehics. But also, there’s something about the scope and impact of this story,
and the many online innovations created to best cover the trial against the
perpetrator.

As VG’s Anders Giaever wrote in one of his many brilliant comment pieces
from the trial (my translation): ”Tears are shed at the judge’s table. The defence
attorney looks downs and rubs his eyes. Several of the defendant’s attorneys
are fighting to gain control over their voices. Journalists are crying. The
audience is crying. And of course the next of kin, the families of the victims
and the survivors are crying.”

That of
course is one kind of story, raising all sorts of ethical issues and
conundrums. A very different kind are the kind of cases mentioned by Mediawise’s
Mike Jempson where the media perpetuates something blatantly untrue or so
twisted it comes close to a lie which could be so hard to live with it results
in suicide or other terrible consequences.

There are
the ethical issues we all struggle to grasp with in the best possible way,
while sometimes failing due to their complexity or because we don’t properly
see all the ramifications of our decisions, and those cases which seems like a
deliberate obfuscation or plain lie. There are cases of blatant government
censorship and laws that seems invented only to obstruct journalists from
telling the truth – be it about companies or politicians. Sometimes the ethical
challenges are universal, sometimes they are entirely unique to the country in
question.

Could there
possibly be international interest in a website that focuses on the whole
breadth of such challenges? I actually think there would be, seeing how the
journalistic community, and that of media academics, tend to be very interested
in ethical issues pertaining to journalism in general.

I’m not
entirely certain about the best form a website dedicated to such a project
should take, and how it best should be achieved in terms of organisation, but I
do think a combination of original, case-based, content and RSS-feeds + tool
kits could work very well. In either case, it will be interesting to follow the
MediaAct-project to see how it evolves.

NB: I'm a bit late blogging about this as I picked up a strep infection at the airport on the way back from Bristol, and went straight from two weeks of strep-induced downtime to moving etc.

"The networked individualism operating system creates new
efficiencies and affordances in the ways people solve problems and meet
their social needs. Whereas in the past, it was not easy for people to
get real-time information to help navigate a place, now it could hardly
be easier with instantly available maps, augmented reality mobile apps
that give people helpful information about their surroundings, and
crowdsourced input about the environs."

Journalism and Wikipedia

Journalism, as a field, should be concerned with adding to the record that is Wikipedia, argues Doc Searls in a post which spurs a really interesting discussion in the comment section.

Doctors of doom

Few things makes me as angry as reading about doctors who take it upon themselves to make uninformed, blanket judgements about how an injury may cripple you for life. I really don't understand why some of them find it necessary to dole out what are effectively life sentences, when they simply do not know for sure.

It makes me angry because I myself was told my life was probably over after a serious car accident at 17, so when I read this gripping story about a girl who defied doctors who told her she would never walk again that's the thought that hit me: why? I'm not so sure about the article's conclusion - Mind over Science - I think it's more of a question of doctors making unscientific judgements, or judgements based on too little or inclonclusive evicence. I wonder if one reason for this may be found in this study on blind spots, or biases: "Why smart people are stupid".

August 12, 2012

Modern newsagents are diversifying as quickly as they can it seems. I just came across this fascinating photo I snapped last year because I was stunned by how many different services and goods this London newsagent sold. Is there a parallel here to the media industry? Should there be more of a parallel than there is? In either case, I find it a fascinating photo to contemplate:

May 20, 2012

I must admit celebrating 17 May has at times felt as too much hassle due to all the preparations involved. But against the backdrop of the devastating twin terror attacks on 22 July last year, and the current, painful trial against mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, I found this week's 17 May parade incredibly moving.

Even to the point that I berated myself for letting myself become blind to the beauty of it in previous years, for allowing myself to take such a unique and joyful celebration of independence and democracy for granted.

Norwegian farmers went on strike on Tuesday morning, as they sought to keep bread off supermarket shelves by blocking entrances to mills across the country in protest against the collapse of agricultural policy negotiations at the weekend.

However, The National Farmer's Association said they had neither been informed of, nor supported, the local newspaper blockade against Sunnmörsposten.

Understandably, the latter blockade has been met with much derision and ridicule - and has been yet another reminder that not all PR is good PR.

About

Media junkie blogging about everything media, interspersed with the odd report on Scandinavia's many idiosyncracies.
I work around the clock at times, so posts here will be irregular. This blog is a personal one Click here to read more about me.

Comment Policy

Comments are welcome, but due to the curse of spam I've had to turn on pre-moderation both for comments and trackbacks. However, all comments & trackbacks on topic will be accepted, apologies for any delays. For the sake of people's ability to listen in to the conversation I prefer comments in English, but also accept Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and German.